News

Following Kultur | lx’s call for applications from professional art galleries to stage a solo or group exhibition at the Saarländische Galerie – Europäisches Kunstforum during Berlin Art Week (13–17 September), Nosbaum Reding Gallery will present Industrial Visceral by artist Hisae Ikenaga from 13 September to 7 October 2023.

Located in an up-and-coming artistic area of Berlin with other galleries nearby, the Saarländische Galerie will be hosting Ikenaga’s first solo project in the German capital.

The multidisciplinary artist has produced new sculptural pieces for the exhibition, combining ceramics, wood and metal to create installations that defy easy categorisation. Are they the remains of a cannibalistic feast, objects from an archaeological dig, a crime scene, a butcher’s shop or an abandoned operating theatre?  These colliding worlds create a strong sense of both familiarity and strangeness as we look at the objects and structures. They all seem familiar everyday items but the unexpected concatenation of a vase and a visceral arabesque gives us pause for thought. Continuing her reflections on the history of objects, their manufacture, form – whether canonical or ethnicised – and uses, Ikenaga dissects the relationship between people and objects. She composes her artworks by combining existing and newly created objects, leaving us unable to tell the real from the fake. Reminiscent of some of Victor Brauner’s Surrealist assemblages, her pieces tell the story of the production of crafted or manufactured objects, the large scale and the small, the human hand and the perfection of machines. A thread running through her work is the strangeness of these juxtapositions, revealing how we sanctify, authenticate and worship objects or how they become such a part of ourselves that we stop noticing them.

Coinciding with Berlin Art Week, a highlight of the city’s cultural calendar, the exhibition will be accompanied by a Nosbaum Reding catalogue featuring essays by Marianne Derrien and Laura Helena Wurth, art critics from France and Germany respectively.

This initiative, organised for the first time by Kultur | lx in collaboration with the Ministry of Culture, the Embassy of Luxembourg in Berlin and the Saarländische Galerie – Berlin, aims to promote artists and players from the Luxembourg art scene on the German and international stage, by drawing on a network with both commercial and institutional reach.

HISAE IKENAGA, Industrial Visceral
Saarländische Galerie – Europäisches Kunstforum, Charlottenstraße 3, 10969 Berlin, Germany
U6 Kochstraße/Checkpoint Charlie

13 September – 7 October 2023
Opening hours: Tue–Sat, 2–6 p.m.
During Berlin Art Week: Fri 12–9 p.m., Sat 12–8 p.m., Sun 12–6 p.m.

Opening
Friday 15.09.2023 | 6-9 p.m.

Meet the Artist
Saturday 16.09.2023 | 3-7 p.m.